If I only could, make a deal with God, get him to swap our places
-Running Up That Hill, Placebo
-0-0-0-
He wants to stay with her.
He doesn't want to leave her side.
But they're taking her into surgery and he can't come.
They promise him she'll be alright, but he doesn't know if he believes them. He doesn't know if he trusts them with her life.
And it's too much like her shooting. As they wheel her away on a stretcher and he stands alone in the hallway, it's far too much like her shooting.
Please don't let it be exactly like her shooting.
He can't take it if she leaves again.
"Castle!"
He turns around at the sound of his name – Ryan and Esposito are running down the corridor towards him. Ryan's expression screams of panic and anxiety; Esposito's is colder, angry and determined.
In the ambulance on the way to the hospital, he'd called them. He'd called everyone. Jim Beckett first, then his mother, then Esposito and Ryan, then Lanie. With Martha and Lanie, he had to leave a message. It's after eleven PM now, so he isn't surprised that the boys arrived first.
"What happened?" Esposito demands, coming to a stop in front of Castle; his partner is just a few steps behind him.
"We were in front of Montgomery's house." He isn't sure where he gets the strength to recount the awful tale. "In case someone decided to come back. Kate thought she saw something, so we got out of the car, but there was nothing there. She figured she'd imagined it, and we were going to get back in the car, and then… he showed up. Just appeared out of nowhere behind her. And… he stabbed her in the back and ran away."
-0-0-0-
He doesn't care about the man in the black ski mask fleeing the scene. Let him run. Let him run from the atrocities he's committed for the rest of his life and then let him burn in hell for eternity. He doesn't care.
All he cares about his her.
She's dropping to her knees, toppling sideways, plummeting towards the sidewalk. Crumpling. And he's yelling her name, her first name, as though he thinks that with that single syllable he can somehow call her back from the precipice of death she's suddenly dangling from the edge of. But no, he knows better. He must know better, because he's dropping to the ground next to her, his hand finding the back of her neck and supporting her head. He's thinking he has to hold onto her, no matter what, because maybe if he can't talk her back from the cliff, he can pull her back.
"Not again," he mutters as he pushes a few strands of beautiful golden-brown hair out of her face. It's the shooting all over again, and he couldn't save her. Why can he never save her? "Please, not again." He glances down to the blood that's pooling around her, forming a dark red circle around her midsection, a dark red circle with its center at that point at her back where the masked figure pushed a blade inside her, a dark red circle with Kate's body drawing a line through the middle. He doesn't want to look at it; it's too awful, too horrid. He'd rather look at her, feasting on the beauty of her face and drinking in the sadness in her eyes. But he can't keep his eyes off of it. It's the same feeling he has on the days when she's late, when he sits in the precinct with two cups of coffee quickly losing heat, when he can't stop glancing at his watch and wondering when she'll join him. But on those days, she always walks in the door eventually. She always greets him with a casual "Hey, Castle," as she picks up her coffee and takes a seat at her desk, seemingly oblivious to the great relief she's sent washing over him. But this is different. The pool of blood is a clock that counts down the seconds of her life, not the seconds of the day. And she will not walk in the door to take her coffee and stop his endless glancing at the clock. There will be no relief.
An ambulance. He needs to call an ambulance. He grabs his phone from his pocket, doesn't bother to unlock it – he goes straight to the emergency call and punches the numbers 9-1-1 with his thumb. He forces himself not to look at the blood, and instead stares down into her face as he presses the phone to his ear. She's staring up at him, too, fear swimming in her lovely green irises.
In their eyes are all the words they never got the chance to say.
"911, what's your emergency?" The female voice is pleasant. Too pleasant.
"I need an ambulance," he practically yells into the phone. "A woman's been stabbed." He doesn't like calling her 'a woman'. She isn't just a woman. She's the woman, Kate Beckett, strong and smart and fierce and independent and so very, very brave. Too brave.
He tells the 911 woman where to find them and hangs up the phone. Two things to focus on is one too many when one of them is Kate bleeding out on the sidewalk. He doesn't want to think about anything but her right now, because even her alone is just a little bit too much for him to handle. He can't be distracted. He has to focus on her, hold onto her, stay with her so she'll stay with him.
They will stay there, on the sidewalk, together, until the ambulance comes. He will keep her awake and she will keep him alive. They can do this. They can get through this together, as partners, or maybe as something more. She will survive.
He's just starting to relax a little when her eyes begin to close.
"No – Kate!" But she's not listening. She can't hear him, not where she is. "Stay with me, Kate!" She has to stay awake. She has to. And she can – he knows she can. She's fighting to keep her eyes open, struggling to overcome the darkness, but she's won battles harder than this. She will keep fighting until she wins, and he will stay there with her to remind her of what she's fighting for.
"Please, Kate." His voice is a whisper, light as the wind, but as he gently caresses her soft cheek with the back of his hand, he knows she can hear him. "Stay with me. You have to stay with me. The ambulance is coming. You're going to be alright. You just have to stay with me long enough for them to get here, okay? Can you do that for me?"
That's what he says.
Please say you can do that for me, is what he doesn't say. Please say you can do that, because if you can't, I don't know what I'll do. Please say you can do that, because if you can't, I'll fall apart. Because if you die, I'll die with you.
But she doesn't say anything.
And her eyes start to close again.
And he's torn, because he knows he can't let her fall asleep, can't let her die, can't let her go. But he doesn't know how to keep her awake because it's physically impossible for him to raise his voice above a whisper and he doesn't want to shake her because he's afraid she might break. He can't let her go, but if he holds her too tight, moves her too suddenly, she'll shatter like glass.
But he has to keep her awake. So he grasps her shoulder in his free hand and shakes, so slightly, so gently. "Kate," he says insistently; he can hear the edge of panic in his voice. "Kate, come on, stay with me. Please don't leave me."
He couldn't protect her.
Why couldn't he protect her?
What good is he if he can't protect the people he loves when it matters the most?
And he's begging, begging her to stay, begging her not to leave and send him spiraling into a dark depression that will swallow him whole. "Please, Katie," he says. "Please."
He knows she wouldn't like him calling her Katie. But he doesn't know what else to do.
At last, he caves.
He looks down at the pool of blood.
And almost faints.
It's big, far too big. It's not a circle anymore; the deadly red liquid is branching out in every which way, seeking out low points in the sidewalk and racing towards them. It's soaking the white fabric of her shirt, climbing up her sides and edging onto her stomach. It's reached him, seeped into the knees of his pants, and he hadn't even noticed. God, he hadn't even noticed how close to death she must be.
"Katie, please!"
He doesn't really know what he's doing or why he's doing it, but he grabs her hand and holds it tight. He can't bring himself to let go. He doesn't think he'll ever be able to let go. Because, ironically, despite the fact that she's the one on the ground dying and he's the one who's suffered no damage worse than bloodstained pants, her hand in his is the only thing tethering him to this world.
The only thing tethering him to life.
She looks so small, so helpless, and in this moment, he can't think of anything he wouldn't give up just to save her life. It reminds him of a lyric, the first line of the chorus of a song he heard once, the soundtrack to a death scene on one of his favorite television shows.
If I only could make a deal with God, get him to swap our places
If he only could… if he only could, he knows he would. He would give anything to switch with her, to be the one dying instead of her. He hates himself for it. He knows the pain of watching the life drain out of a loved one, having experienced it twice now, and he hates himself for wishing that pain on Kate. All the same, he cannot help it – he desires nothing more than to take her place.
God, he loves her so much.
His thoughts are invaded by a sound he's always considered irritating. Now, he can't think of a more beautiful noise in the world.
Sirens.
The ambulance.
"They're coming, Kate," he assures her. "They can save you. You just have to hold on until they get here. Just hold on."
Please hold on.
She's trying, he can tell. But she's fighting a losing battle and her strength is slipping away from her with each passing moment. And he wishes with all his heart that he could give her all of his, let his life leave his body in the hopes that the strength she unwittingly steals from him will be enough to keep her safe. Enough to keep her alive. If he knew a way, he'd do it. But he doesn't.
Her eyes are closing. Closing, closing, closing… closed. He couldn't save her.
"Just hold on, Kate."
Please just hold on.
-0-0-0-
"Where is she now?"
"She's in surgery." Castle sinks into a chair, his hands over his face, desolation pressing in on him from all sides. This is his fault. His fault. He was supposed to keep her away from her mother's case. He was supposed to keep her safe.
But when it mattered most, he did nothing.
If she dies, it's his fault. Her blood is on his hands, her death on his conscience. Without her he is lost in a sea of guilt and misery and crushing loneliness. Without her he is nothing. Without her he would not – could not – ever be the same.
"She'll pull through," Esposito offers. "She's tough."
"I know she is."
"She's survived worse than this."
"That's just it." He forces himself to look up, to meet Esposito's eyes. "What if this is it? What if she's cheated death one too many times?"
None of them seemed to have an answer for that.